Variable charge out rates for regular customers

this is likely not possible for you to do, but I thought I would throw it out there anyway: Over the last couple of years while driving with Poparide, I have come to know many regular customers that like to travel with me on a very frequent basis. This is really great for commuting, but the problem is, that I do not want to charge them as much as I do the "occasional" customer. I would like my "frequent flyers" to book through poparide so that it makes it easier for me to handle the scheduling end of things, and so that your company makes some money as well, but, without the ability to change my charge out rate, I have to take their business "offline" which does not help either you or me.

Comments

+1 this request! Regular Poparide passengers are often the best customers for both Poparide and the driver - they're definitely way less work to coordinate pickups and dropoffs with. :)

@Randy: Would you want to control this (i.e. edit the price per passenger), or would you be OK with Poparide offering discounts to all regular passengers? I could see the former working as a "discount future trips" option when leaving feedback for a trip. That way the driver could set a discount specific to the passenger for future trips. If the latter, would it just be your passengers that get a discount or would regular Poparide passengers receive discounts on all trips?

@Flo: Weigh in on this one? I really like this idea. I think discounts for regular Poparide passengers is a great idea and I'd have no problem with the lower payout - especially if it encourages more regular users and assists with not taking business "offline".

Maybe both approaches could go on the dev roadmap? Passenger-specific discounts that could be set by the driver as well as auto-discounts for passengers based on spending or number of rides booked in the last 90 days?

I would prefer passenger specific discounts and the reason for this is:

I am really not doing this as a true money maker, but rather a nice service to provide to people, and the fact that it happens to cover some of my commuting costs is fantastic. I happen to have a "frequent flyer" who has come into some really tough times financially, and I want to be able to help this individual out by charging her even less than I would another "frequent flyer" who can afford to pay a bit more.

I think both ideas of "discounted rides" and a "frequent ride programme" are great, so I'll dissect some ideas on each for you to discuss further.

Discounted rides: we are aiming to make our booking service more flexible in the future, such that driver/passenger can have a back and forth around the price of the seat on a particular booking. This would give you full flexibility to offer a discount or ask for more money if the passenger requests a pick-up or drop-off that is out of your way but that you're willing to accommodate. We think this would be the best way to achieve this.

Frequent rider: in the industry, we call this "gamification", which is a rewards system on the basis of activity. We haven't discussed this too much internally, other than we'd love to do it. For now though, passengers can earn $5 of free Poparide credit by referring their friends to our platform at https://www.poparide.com/refer - this is already a popular feature and we'll be bringing it to the apps soon!

Let us know what you think on this. Heads up, this will most likely not happen until the end of 2019!

Thanks Flo - sounds like you've got a great approach to Randy's original idea as well as some other cool features planned. :)

Being able to adjust the price both up and down for each passenger is an awesome idea. I hadn't considered being able to handle things like a small extra charge for pickup that's out of the way (this happens on at least 10% of my rides), or even a more significant charge if the passenger needs to go to a different city that's WAY out of the way!!!